Those of us who haven’t lived in Concordia for quite awhile sometimes wonder what things look like today. Maybe you are wondering if the house you lived in is still there and how it looks now. “Big brother” Google has provided an amazing amount of photography in the Street View feature of Google Maps. In case you haven’t seen this, click on the following link to go there (but you might want to read a few of the instructions below before switching to that display). You will need a broadband Internet connection to use this feature.

This will put you at a familiar location, i.e. in front of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

The best way to navigate around in this display is simply to play around with the various controls. Most of them have labels that pop up when you move the cursor over them. (There is a Help link at the top right of the window, but that is very detailed and takes quite a while to wade through.) The following are a few simple tips to get started.

First of all, to get your bearings, rotate the picture to look across the street at the new addition to the elementary school. You can rotate the view by clicking on the arrows in the circle at the upper left corner of the picture or by putting the cursor in the middle of the picture, holding down the mouse button, and dragging the picture left or right. While you are looking at the new addition, you might want to click on the small thumbnail photo in the upper right to see what used to stand there. (Click on that thumbnail again to close that photo.)

Notice the cross at the upper right of the display. Click on this to get a full screen view. (To get back to the window with more controls, press the Escape key.)

You can then start walking the streets of Concordia. Rotate the photo so that you are looking down a street. Then, click on one of the arrows on the yellow stripe to move in one direction or the other and look around. This process is slow and can be very tedious moving to some place you are interested in. There are several ways to move around quickly. First of all, you can type an address in the search bar at the upper left of the window and press the ‘Search Maps’ button. For example, “682 main st concordia mo” (without the quotes) will move you in front of City Hall. Note that the addresses in Google Maps are only approximate. If you enter the correct address, it will at least get you in the correct block, but you may have to move around a little. This will bring up the map view, so you will have to click on the red marker with an A and then click on ‘Street view’ in the balloon that pops up.

Secondly, you will see a small version of the Maps display in the lower right corner of the window. Click on the upper left corner of that box to expand the map. Then, click on the plus sign in the upper left a number of times to change the scale so that you can see the streets of the city. Drag the little yellow man on the blue marker to the street location where you want to go in order to move the display. (You can then shrink the map back by clicking on the upper left corner again.)

Note that there are street views available for any streets or roads that are outlined in blue when you move the man over them. This includes some of the major roads outside of the city.

Give it a try. I think you will enjoy it.

A final note. There are some invasion of privacy concerns about this site. Some people argue that it is no different than what one would see by driving through the streets. However, the widespread availability of this data is a bit scary to some. If you see anything that you are concerned about, you can contact Google to have some of the features, like faces or license plates, blurred.

Have you checked Google Street View lately. There is now (was, see note below) an option to switch to a 3-D view. Notice the small icon with the red&blue glasses at the upper left of the display. If you click on it, the window will change to a 3 dimensional view. Of course, you will need the red&blue(cyan) 3-D viewing glasses to see the effect.

Maybe not as good as the old stereopticon viewers we used to look through as children, but interesting.

Note. On Apr. 8, the icon has disappeared. It's not clear whether it was just an "April Fool's" joke or if it has been removed because the results were not satisfactory. Were the color anaglyphs synthesized in software without using offset camera views? Has anyone seen the vehicle used for the filming?

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